It’s Been Four Years

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And Eric Garner’s family is still seeking accountability for his death at the hands of New York City police officers in 2014.

This past Tuesday marked the four-year anniversary of Eric Garner’s murder, after which his dying words, “I can’t breathe,” went viral and became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter and anti-police terror movements.

Garner was killed by a white New York City police officer who put him in a fatal chokehold and refused to release him even though he can be heard repeatedly telling the officer he could not breathe in cell phone video footage of the incident.

The New York Police Department (NYPD) finally announced Monday that it would move forward with disciplinary proceedings against the officers involved in Garner’s death after years-long delays.

Officer Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who choked Garner to death, has continued to work for the NYPD on paid desk duty and has received a number of raises since committing the murder.

Garner left behind a wife and six children.

“It’s been four years, and my family has not seen any responsibility taken by the de Blasio administration for the police’s misconduct. All those officers that day, they need to stand accountable for what they did to my son. They killed him. He was unarmed. … My son was doing nothing but trying to help the community, and they took his life. This has to stop. In the black and brown community, they have to treat us with dignity, as they do in other communities. And until this happens, we’re not going to stop.” — Gwen Carr, Eric Garner’s mother

The NYPD has said that if the Justice Department does not produce findings or investigation results by the end of August, the NYPD itself will begin internal proceedings against the officers involved in Garner’s murder.

Carr has called for the immediate termination of employment for all officers who were involved in her son’s death.

According to a Washington Postdatabase, at least 559 people have been shot and killed by the police in the United States this year alone, the most recent being Arthur Lujan, a 30-year-old man who was shot and killed yesterday in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

That puts the country on track to have more than two fatal police shootings every single day this year.

“Yeah, it’s like an epidemic. It keeps happening over and over again. And it’s always in our communities. I’m not saying that people don’t get killed in other communities, but it’s a vast amount, the vast majority, gets killed in the African-American and the black and brown communities. And this is what we need to stop. And the only way it’s going to stop, if we step up and we speak about it and we be about it.” — Carr